Before we get into it, be advised that this series contains bad language and references to violence. It's twelve thirty pm on January six. On the east side of the Capitol Building. A crowd of Trump supporters is growing in number. They're chanting familiar slogans, shouting through bullhorns impossible broth, waving banners and Confederate flags. But they are for now peaceful as we know. Of course, this piece won't last long.
This crowd outside the east wing of the Capital will soon overwhelm the police barrier, knocking officers to the ground, shouting in their faces, advancing on the Capitol Building itself, But not quite yet. For now, these protesters are simply waving their banners and trying to keep warm. On a January morning, It's freezing bro It is so cold. Until suddenly,
out of the blue, their posture changes. They spot something behind the barricades on the police side of the line, a boyish looking man in a navy suit emerging from a black dad as u V. He's energetic and sprightly, booie by the crowd's reaction to his arrival. The young man looks out at the protesters. He can't know what some of them are about to do, but they know full well what he intends to do today. He's been telling them for weeks, speaking on Fox News, on the
Senate floor, posting on social media. His plan has cost him many friends, even lifelong mentors, have turned against him, but that won't stop him, and that's why the crowd cheers him on. In response to their appreciation, the junior Senator for Missouri, fourty year old Josh Holly, raises his fist and salute. This moment, one of solidarity between a U. S senator and a small crowd of protesters, is captured by a nearby photojournalist. Before the day's end, the image
will be plastered on news websites around the world. It will become one of the many iconic moments of January six. A sitting senator showing solidarity with the very people who are about to invade his place of work. Unaware of what lies ahead and focused on his day's work, Senator Hally gives the protesters a thumbs up and disappears into
the Capitol. He's heading for the Senate Chamber, where he plans to mount a challenge against American democracy from the team's at Clues, Own Media, I Heart Radio, and novel. This is The Assault on America Episode five, The Inside Man MHM. So far in this series, we've dissected the vast Stop the Steel disinformation campaign headed by Alley Alexander, who came up with the idea of January six and
spread by the likes of Baked Alaska. We've also met a rioter from Rule, Ohio who swallowed Alexander's poison and is now facing decades in prison along with his commanding officer, the Mercurial Grifters, Stewart Rhodes, who runs the extremest Oothkeeper's Militia the necessity of the regular militia. This time in The Assault on America, we're moving up the chain. Today
the virus enters the main frame. This is the tale of how the youngest sitting you s Senator, welcome the big lie into the political machinery of the United States. It's Senator Josh Holly who on December triggers a vote on whether or not the election result should be upheld. That vote is scheduled for the afternoon of January six. That's why organizers like Ali latched on to this day
as their big chance. By objecting to the certification of the election, Josh Holly gave the far rights something to focus on. He gave them an event without Josh Holly. January six is just another day in Washington. If you'd heard of Senator Josh Holly before the election, you most likely heard him discussing a culture war issue, perhaps railing
against the mainstream media. The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for the six nineteen Project, a propaganda campaign designed to recast America's founding as an evil event or speaking about wokeness or antiva, or some dastardly scheme dreamed up by the radical left to destroy America. We've seen a literal insurrection in the streets of Seattle, a breakaway Antifa enclave ruled by a self described warlord. You cannot
make this stuff up. You can make it up. I was there, and while the chap was a very messy and ultimately deadly place, it was not ruled by a warlord. But Holly's rhetoric here and everywhere else prior to the election sounded like any other Republican senator. He was just fresher faced, more eloquent, and judging by his TV appearances, angrier than the rest of them. The bitter resentment of a professional political class cannot accept the verdict of the people.
Probuses and distortions, secret meetings, outright lies at time to bring this fiasco to a close. But Senator Holly didn't always sound so angry. Twenty two years ago, long before he got into politics, Josh Holly was a very different person. His journey to high office begins at exactly the kind of liberal elite institution he now derives from the floor
of the U. S. Senate, Stanford University. If you're a fellow student and made Josh's acquaintance when he was a Stanford undergraduate, you would probably have your as the saying goes your socks charmed off, meet Professor David Kennedy. If there was a video game about coastal liberal elites, he'd be the final boss. He's an urbane academic who writes books with titles like Freedom from Fear, the American People in Depression and War. He won a Pulitzer for that one.
By the way, When Josh Holly arrived at Stanford in nineteen ninety eight, David Kennedy was exactly the sort of prestigious advisor Holly set out to cultivate. Well. I first heard Josh Holly's name when he walked into my office in nineteen night as a freshman student and declared that he had a very big interest in the American presidency as an institution, and he would like me to put together some reading a reading list for him so that
he could learn more about that. Professor Kennedy was kind of amused that an eighteen year old would bounce into his office in the first week and demand extra reading, but he humored the young Holly. He put together a list of classic works about the presidency, by the Talkville, by James Bryce, by the other people whose books I'm never going to read, and he sent Holly on his way.
That Kennedy thought was the last he'd ever see of the over ambitious freshman, But about two three, no more than four weeks later, he reappeared in the office and he said, well, Professor Kennedy, I've done the reading you assigned me, and now I'd like some more. I thought, there's no way that this young fellow could have completed that pretty heavy duty reading list, and there's certainly no way he could have taken it on board in a way that he comprehends or really got anything out of it.
So I sat him down started asking him some questions about some of these texts, some of which are a bit arcane, and it is really demanding kind of reading. And he nailed every question I put to him. It was clear that in the brief span of time that had elapsed, not only had he done all the reading I had asked him to do, but he thought about it analytically, critically, synthetically. And I thought to myself, this is an unusual student. David wasn't the only person who
thought Holly was different. Friends and teachers alike had him pegged one day to become at least a U S senator. It's a crazy thing to say about any student, but Holly really was that gifted. I became his academic advisor. He majored in history, and then I eventually ended up as the supervisor of what we here call a senior honors thesis that he wrote about the intellectual formation of
Theodor Roosevelt. And that thesis, I'll say, without qualification, was one of the two best senior honors thesis, and I supervised an half a century here a Stanford. In two thousand eight, Holly turned his thesis into a book. He seemed to be on track to become a renowned academic like his friend and mentor David Kennedy. Holly even gave his book the kind of title that Kennedy might use
for one of his Theodore Roosevelt Preacher of Righteousness. He had what was clear to me, a deep scholarly temperament. He had all the attributes of somebody who could develop into an absolutely first rate scholar. But Holly always had bigger plans than academia. He'd never hidden his political ambitions, and he understood that in American politics there is one tried and tested fast track to the top. Over one third of US politicians started their career this way, including
half of all U S presidents. So you've guessed it. After Stanford, Josh Holly joined a biker gang. Just kidding, he studied law at Lee. Yes. After graduating from Stanford, the future scourge of US elites headed to Yale University to pay fifty thou dollars a year to become an attorney. From there, he moved to d C and snagged a slew of prestigious clerkships, including with the Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. Ten short years later, Josh Holly decides he's ready.
In two thousand sixteen, he steps into the political arena. My background as a lawyer, as a practicing lawyer is fighting for businesses and individuals and nonprofit groups farm groups against government regulation. Holly leverages his legal background and makes a run for Attorney General of Missouri. I'm Josh Holly,
and I'll fight for Missouri's values as attorneys General. He breathes through the primaries and eventually beats his Democratic rival, becoming the first Republican to hold the office in almost ten years. His former mentor from Stanford, Professor David Kennedy, had stayed in touch with Josh. Of course, I was proud of Josh having notched those kinds of achievements at a very young age, and when he ran for attorney general,
I actually joked with him. I said, I'd be happy to send you a contribution, Josh, but maybe it would prejudice the case there for you in Missouri if it got out that a California Democrat professor was contributed to your campaign. But I wished him well, and I attended his inauguration as Attorney General of Missouri in two thousand seventeen. Clearly, then, at this point in his life, Josh Holly is still
the charming young man from his Stanford days. He's willing to joke with liberal friends like David and clearly doesn't think they're colluding to destroy the United States. Holly was a partisan, but not an a rational one. There were, however, early signs that he'd started to change. He'd won the race for attorney General with the help of a TV that blasted career politicians who use state office as a
stepping stone for their national ambitions. Jefferson City is full of career politicians just climbing the ladder, using one office to get another. As Holly addresses the camera, men in suits are literally climbing ladders all around him. It's a real work of art. Conservative outsider Attorney General. I'm Josh Holly. I think you deserve better. Seven months after becoming Attorney General in Missouri, Josh Holly thought that he deserved better too.
In August two thousand seventeen, he formed an exploratory campaign committee for a U. S. Senate run now he was the one climbing ladders. He wins again, this time by leaning on his Missouri roots and setting up a theme he'll return to again and again in the future, the demonizing of elites. Here's a schmulti campaign ad he put out. You'll see what I mean. The elites you run our nation. Call this flyover country, big squares. They only see out
the windows of jet airport they pull. The lovers of power in Washington at Hollywood call the shots on wall streets. They're not just distant from our lives, they're distant from our values, making decisions to enrich themselves. I'm not sure what Hollywood has to do with Missouri, but the message from privately educated Josh Holly, son of a bank manager and a high flying graduate of Stanford in Yale, was
that the elites have dominated Missouri for too long. On the campaign trail, Holly ties his campaign as closely as possible to Donald Trump, who had taken Missouri by eighteen and a half points only the year before. When I think about President Trump, there's one word that comes to mind. That word is courage. Do you agree? And well? It works? Smash cut to the two thousand eighteen midterm election, and I had a very nice call with the President of
the United States. Josh Holly has just become the youngest sitting United States Senator. Thank you, MS President for your leadership, Thank you for believing in Missouri. Tonight the people of Missouri have delivered, but things were about to take a darker turn. Any teacher is proud of students being successful, and I was. I was very proud of his success. I mean it killed me that he was a Republican. That's another one of Josh's former teachers, Professor Elizabeth Bernhardt.
Like David Kennedy, Professor Bernhardt remained friends with Josh beyond his years as a student, even attending his wedding in two thousand ten. But as Josh Holly became more involved in politics, Professor Bernhardt found herself worrying about the trajectory of his career. There was one event, in particular that she could not reconcile with the traditional conservative she'd known
at Stanford Charlotte Sville no question. On August eleventh, two thousand seventeen, a white supremacist rally was held in Charlottesville, Virginia. Far right activists and supporters of all stripes marched through the city, carrying tiki torches and fighting with counter protesters. Back a fuck up like com back a buck up. One of their number would eventually drive his car into a crowded street, not throw into people, killing a thirty one year old woman named Heather Higher. Oh my god,
Oh my god, Oh my god. The event led to one of the most infamous comments of Donald Trump's presidency. You also had people, very fine people on both sides Charlottesville. That is a moment for me when I thought all persons need to abandon ship. That is just no. And you can't have taken my course and say yes or maybe at that moment. The course that Elizabeth Bernhardt is referring to is the one that she taught Josh Holly back when he was at Stanford. It was called Letters
and Diaries of Resistance in Nazi Germany. The course was about where do you get the strength to essentially sacrifice your life for doing the right thing in a situation where you know you probably are not going to win. Elizabeth's course looked at the writings of Germans who knew that resistance to Hitler would get them killed and decided to resist anyway, the class was focused on the emotion
I guess of courage. Now this wasn't just any old class that Josh Holly happened to take as an undergraduate. This was a class that he specifically sought out, deploying the same charm and industrious nous that had pressed David Kennedy. He wrote in his application, I've already read all of this stuff that you're offering in this class. And I said, I don't understand. You've applied for this class, but you've read everything. Why do you want to be in this class?
He said, very nicely, I'm really interested in knowing what other people think about this material. And I eventually hired him to work in the class as he became a senior, and I took more sophomores in. So he was wonderful to work with, wonderful to know. Holly was so taken with this class that he mentioned it in a speech in two thousand two, saying that what he learned from it became a quote so much a part of me that I could not help but share it with others.
But the fact that Holly stuck so closely to Trump during his Senate campaign, even after Trump described neo Nazis at Charlottesville as very fine people, caused Elizabeth Bernhard to ask herself a question, what lessons could Josh Holly possibly have taken away from her? Course, there's probably no question about him that troubles me more I I would have
to say none. I'm just stupefied by any support for any group of people who would either carry a swastika, would wear a sweatshirt with Auschwitz on the front, who would yell Jews will not replace us. This is one thousand percent at athetical to anything that we discussed or read after Charlotte'sville. Josh Holly went about his business as a senator. Maybe his friends and mentors thought maybe his transgressions up till now were the compromises one has to
make in politics. But if further proof was needed that Josh Holly was willing to move beyond the usual compromises required up a politician, it came in November. The really bad part then came about the big lie. The process
is rigged, This whole election is being grigged. After the presidential election, Josh Holly was one of the first high profile politicians to fall in line with Drump's falsehood that the election had been fraudulent times election, But Holly didn't approach the lie in the same crass, lazy way that Trump did. Not a conspiracy theory post. No, Josh Holly has the guile and eloquence to make it sound like he's simply doing the job of a responsible elected official.
I have heard from people like I've never heard before over the last month about this election, and they have major, major concerns about the integrity the fairness of this election. And somebody has got to take their concerns seriously and speak up. And that's what I'm gonna do. Holly presents himself as someone who's merely trying to start a debate about electoral integrity. Meanwhile, he starts publicly questioning whether Joe
Biden will even become president at all. If Joe Biden ends up being sworn as president, if he if Joe Biden, if he is the president, if Joe Biden ends up his president, any worry Joe Biden, if if? If? If? But Holly's next step takes the matter beyond mere rhetoric.
On December he announces that he's going to challenge the electoral College results in the Senate, the Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has been dreading this move, understanding that it would put other Senators in a tight spot. Do they vote with Trump and against democracy, or do they go on record accepting Joe Biden's victory. McConnell feared that if Holly triggered such a vote, it would breach
the damn He was exactly right. As soon as Holly announced his intentions, a host of Senators and congress people followed suit, vowing to challenge the electoral college results on January six. At this point, more than ninety federal and state judges had rejected Trump's lawsuits seeking to overturn the outcome of the election. Trump's own Attorney General, Bill Barr,
had dismissed allegations that there was widespread voter fraud. There's been no discrepancy reported anywhere that's looked at that, and I'm still not aware of any discrepidanst That didn't stop Holly. His mentor David Kennedy, was alarmed. That was a shock
to me across the board. Frankly, I thought it was a really, really dangerous to be honest, and I was shocked, and I dare say appalled that the President stuck with that line of our ument, and compoundedly appalled when others, including someone for whom I in answers respect that's Josh, I got on board with that. David wasn't the only person shocked at Holly's decision. His former political mentor in Missouri,
former Republican Senator Jack Danforth, was also astounded. He publicly declared that supporting Josh Holly had been the greatest mistake he'd ever made. Holly's biggest donor, a businessman named David Humphries, who had donated over six million dollars to Holly's campaigns, wrote that Holly had revealed himself as a political opportunist, willing to subvert the constitution and the ideals of the nation. He swore to uphold. We always allow for a little
hyperbolean politics, but that strong stuff. And the reason is simple, Josh Holly was pushing the big lie harder and harder. On January four, he went on Fox News for an interview with anchor Brett Bear. I just want to pinion down on on what you're trying to do. Are you trying to say that as of January that President Trump will be president. Well, that that it depends on what
happens on Wednesday. Wednesday is, of course, January six. Holly is implying to Fox News viewers that their actions in d C and his actions on the Senate floor might still swing the election for Donald Trump. As it turns out, Holly pushed things too far, even for Fox News quite an achievement. What happens on Wednesday in the States, by the constitution, say they certify the election. They did certify it. By the constitution, Congress doesn't have the right to overturn
the certification for this interview and for many others. The Senate would later open an ethics inquiry into Holly's actions, claiming that he quote lint legitimacy to the mob's cause and made future violence more likely. And when the violence starts, Josh Holly is in the Senate chamber preparing to mount his challenge against the election. He doesn't get the chance. At two thirty three p m. Secret Service agents abruptly rush into the chamber and remove Vice President Mike Pence.
Somewhat unsettled, the senators continue debating, ignoring the lingering questions, we need to do something. At two pm, with the senators still in the chamber, shots are heard from the other side of the building, and I will stand in recess until the call of the chair. At this point, rioters are less than two minutes away from preaching the chamber. Protestors are in the Michael Cranish, an investigative reporter for the Washington Post, has the inside scoop on Holly's movements
at this time. As the storming of the capital occurs in the Holly's in the Senate with the other senators. Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, confronts Holly and he says, quote, you have caused this, So there's a lot of tension going on. I can't help, but wonder did Holly have second thoughts as he stood in the Senate chamber with a mob seconds away and a party elder pinning the
blame directly on him. The senators are then taken away to a secure room in an office building near the Capitol building, the Senate Office Building, and one senator looked over in this room, and every time he looked over, he saw Holly standing alone, basically in a corner. The question for Holly was simple, should he go through with his plan to challenge the election, even in the face
of a historic ransacking of the Capitol building. There were efforts trying to talk him out of going through with his challenging of the results, but Holly refused and he went forward in fact with the challenging of the results. In the end, he was only one of seven Senators to vote to challenge those results, so his effort failed. But the people who are critical of them would say
the damage was done. Following the carnage on January six, Josh Holly became one of the most toxic politicians in Washington. Even some Republicans were calling for his resignation. But the truth is his political prospects have only risen since the riot. Any donors he lost after the riot were more than made up for by the flood of cash that poured
from Americans who bought the big lie to them. Josh Holly is a patriot, one of the few suits in Washington brave enough to take a stand against the biggest fraud in American history, the of a presidential election. Now our man. Josh Holly has said that if Donald Trump runs again in he'll fight for the former president with everything he has. But if Trump doesn't run, then perhaps Josh Holly will. I mean, his clean cut, youthful looks, his ivy league eloquence, it all kind of makes him
just a much better version of Donald Trump. Has his dedication to the big lie made him Trump's heir apparent. There's another question that those who know him well are asking themselves. Is there any chance he believes what he's saying. His former professor Elizabeth Bernhardt doesn't think so. This is a person who has every talent and skill to find the information, the data if that election were stolen and
we've never seen it. There are a bunch of his call as that I suspect aren't smart enough to be able to look for a lot of that kind of information. That's not true of Josh Holly. Ultimately, his mentors are stumped. That was not the person I knew, and knew pretty well as a young man, when anger just wasn't part of his makeup. I don't understand what you're thinking. Tell me what I really would like to know. Tell me what you're thinking, I asked Michael Cranish for a more
dispassionate view. He's a journalist, after all, we're very impartial people. There's some people look at Josh holly'd say, gee, what happened to him? But I look back at his history, his writings and so forth, I saw that it was pretty consistent from the time he's fifteen years old and even earlier, actually up until today. Michael spoke to some of Josh Holly's friends and mentors in the wake of
the Capital riot. He also noticed that many of the people in Ally's life had only encountered the smooth talking moderate and not the ruthlessly ambitious hard miner until he reached the Senate. They've only seen him on his best behavior. They had a view of him, and they helped him along, and now they feel deceived, betrayed. They uw some pretty strong language to describe Holly. Michael argues that the real Josh Holly has always been hiding in plain sight. You
just have to look back into the past. Before his days as a charming Stanford grad and pro bono Washington attorney, Josh Holly grew up in a small city called Lexington in northwest Missouri. Lexington's about an hour from Kansas city. It's right on the Missouri River, and if you go there today, it looks pretty down on its heels. The
area is known even today as a little Dixie. Dixie is basically synonymous with the Deep South during the Confederacy era, and as it happens, Lexington, Missouri, before and during the Civil War, was the center of slavery in Missouri. There was a lot of slavery in Missouri, and the greatest concentration of enslaved people happens to have been in Lexington. This is interesting because if you visit Lexington, Missouri now, you will find no trace of this history whatsoever. It's
just not something that people talk about. This historical blindness of the town seems to have imprinted itself on Holly's own worldview. Josh Holly, when he was fifteen years old and it started going to private school in Kansas City, wrote a series of columns for the local Lexington newspaper called State of the Union. And I was fifteen, I was playing dungeons and dragons to each his own I guess anyway, Josh Holly had some heavy hitting opinions for
a fifteen year old son of a bank manager. He said that affirmative action programs which helped blacks, for example, who have been subject to discrimination and other people who have just suffered the overall effects of general discrimination, even if not directly. He said that affirmative action was a quote perverted racial spoils system, and he said that Martin Luther King Jr. The great civil rights leader, would have been turning over his grave over affirmative action, would have
been repulsed by it. Punchy stuff. But is it in any way accurate. It's just not true at all. King clearly favorite of front of action programs, and in fact, he was specifically asked about these and said, you know, this was needed to give people some equality, to make up for all the centuries of racism and for what happened during the era of slavery and so forth. So
Holly just did not have a proper understanding of that history. Now, why are we critiquing a newspaper written by a fifteen year old, even if he is a future U. S. Senator. The reason is that there's a version of Josh Holly that has been remarkably consistent throughout his life. This is a Josh Holly who wrote in defense of the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh he Lambastad the media for stereotyping militia members like McVeigh as radical right wing pro assault
weapon freaks. This is after McVeigh murdered a hundred and sixty nine people. This is also the Josh Holly who made popcorn in anticipation of the bombing of Baghdad during the Allied invasion of a rat in two thousand three. And it's a Josh Holly who pushed a lie to ingratiate himself with millions of Trump voters who might be looking for a new candidate to send the White House in four the moderate Republican and all around good fellow that he inhabited at Stanford, That was only half the story.
Since the election, it's clear which version of himself Josh Holly has settled into. When Josh Holly cast his vote to challenge the election results at eight pm on January six, the blood on the marble floors of the US capital was practically still wet. Hundreds of police officers and rioters were seeking medical attention. Four people were already dead. Three more all police officers would perish in the next forty
eight hours, and things aren't looking any better. For the future, we can only guess at what further harm is being stored up by the continued falsehood spread by Holly and his allies. What is the future in a nation where almost a third of the population believe that their democracy is functionally dead. Your guess is as good as mine on that one. But I can tell you this that mass illusion serves Josh Holly very well. Hell, it might
even take him to the White House. For the rest of us, well, for the rest of us, it screws things up beyond comprehension. I don't know whether it's more accurate to frame Holly as a symptom or a cause of our current social ills and the rise of political violence in the United States. He has certainly played a role in making those problems worse. But he's also someone who grew up in a society that the fifteen year old kids published political rants aimed at pushing fringe agendas.
He's someone who grew up surrounded by people who convinced him to have sympathy for a man who detonated a truck bomb next with daycare, and so at the end of this episode, I'm left thinking that, in some ways, the story of Josh Holly is the story of the inevitability of the Capitol riot. In the next episode, we go to the front line of the mayhem as police
battle rioters, bear spray and bomb threats the guard. He leans over and he takes a look at the device, and he recoils immediately and says, holy shit, it's a bomb. Join me in episode six, Hugs and Kisses